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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299209">We're In This Together</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryptidPrynt/pseuds/CryptidPrynt'>CryptidPrynt</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Dismemberment, M/M, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates, The Stranger Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), absolutely nasty shit folks, anyways happy halloween, funny to put "romantic soulmates" next to "blood and gore" but thats their relationship for you, relatively 1700s era, this is real early days b+h, tried writing horror but its just kinda spooky, we cant all be jonny sims now can we</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:01:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,476</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryptidPrynt/pseuds/CryptidPrynt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Regarding the path that led Breekon and Hope to become avatars.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Stranger Entity Breekon &amp; Stranger Entity Hope (The Magnus Archives), Stranger Entity Breekon/Stranger Entity Hope (The Magnus Archives)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>We're In This Together</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hope is, in every regard, a monster. He is a murderer, inhumane and violent, and he is the love of my life. It's a funny thing, how natural it is to think now. He is unashamedly horrid, evil, and he is all mine. he is a killer, and I don't bat an eye when he proves himself to be so. I never really did, to be honest, it has forever felt like his true nature. however, there had to be a start, didn't there? And with that start some uneasy feelings, certainly. As much as it feels natural now, it was not always this way.<br/>
His behavior started very early, of course. We'd been working together about... two or three years at that point. We were close, much closer than perhaps normal friends would be, we were a hell of a pair. I was quiet and cold, he was witty and loud, we were both giant and terrifying. Even when we were human, we preferred being seen as a whole thing together. It felt right.<br/>
He was always so tough around everybody. He was snappy and harsh, quick to get violent. However, he was soft around me. He was gentle, a version of himself I knew nobody else would ever see of him. I won't say I was the balance, I never stopped him from doing so, I just helped him get out of trouble. It was funny how we worked like that, we had each other's backs without question.<br/>
He did start to change at some point, though. who knows what it was, what whispered to him and told him to commit the atrocities he did. There was a hunger in him from the very beginning, I suppose it was only a matter of who fed it first.</p><p>We lived two doors down from each other in an apartment complex. It was a small room, meant to fit a normal-sized person, which neither of us was. Our overseers threw all the workers into the complex, everybody cramped together, forced to spend all our time with one another. It felt like a prison, except you could leave if you wanted to, yet everyone was too poor or too old to bother. He made it bearable for me, though. He was there, which meant I'd have a reason to wake up every day, a reason to laugh at his terrible jokes; he gave me someone to keep me warm on cold nights, and someone to love. I did the exact same for him.</p><p>As I have said, he was always violent with people. It was a defense, to be snarky and have an iron fist in everybody's face. This was not unusual, and I was more used to it than anything. He was never harsh with me, anyway, so what did I care if a few people got their teeth knocked in? I would have helped him hide a body if he'd ask me, and to my dismay, ask me he would.<br/>
I remember the first time it happened. it was late, rainy, and cold, and I was likely the only other person awake in the building. I hadn't seen him since the late afternoon and was getting a little antsy thinking I should go check on him. Maybe it was too late to bother him, but I wanted an excuse to say goodnight.<br/>
I forget what I went to ask him for, a blanket or a comb, or even just to sit with him near the fire. However, when I knocked on the door, it opened slightly. Peculiar, I thought, since he always had his door locked, but I took it as an invitation to enter. It was dark in his room and too quiet. there weren't any dying embers in the fireplace; he hadn't been in his room since the morning. It was then I felt something was very, very wrong.</p><p>A feeling of unease settled in the pit of my stomach, and I grabbed a jacket and an out of the building. I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know where to look for him, I simply moved in the direction that felt right. He wasn't out on a walk, he'd have told me. I doubted any of the other workers had seen him, they were all asleep, and they'd have been too afraid of him to ask where he was going anyway.<br/>
As I wandered, the rain had soaked through my jacket. I'd thought at the last second to bring a little lantern with me, not that it would last in the heavy rain but it was at least something. I couldn't tell if I was shaking from the cold or from my nerves telling me something was wrong. I'm sure it was both.<br/>
I scrambled around, peeking down alleys and wishing my light not to go out. As I strayed farther, I began to smell something rancid. It wasn't strong, unrecognizable yet. I paused in front of a dark alley. The smell was much more noticeable from there, and I realized it was the smell of blood. My heart dropped.<br/>
Turning the corner, I jumped a little at what I saw. Hope was there, leaning against the brick wall, shrouded in darkness. I called out, asking what he was doing back there, but I fell silent mid-sentence as my eyes adjusted to the dark. He was standing, heaving, and I could just barely see his hands shaking. they were covered in blood so dark it looked black. It was spattered on the ground behind him, dripping into a storm drain with the rest of the rain. It covered his mouth, spattering in droplets as he breathed shakily and hard. That was the first time I saw that chilling glint in his eyes, one I've come to adore, yet frightened me in the moment... He looked like a wild animal and made my blood run cold.</p><p>I started to walk towards him, asking him if he was okay, but he cut me off with a harsh "Don't." His voice gurgled, sounding more like a growl than a command. I stopped in my tracks, terrified. He'd never sounded like that before. After a second of silence, I asked him again if he was alright. He still stood there, heaving, and his eyes bore holes into mine. He spoke slowly, blood still dripping from his mouth. He said he did something... very bad. Very, very bad. I asked him if he was hurt, he shook his head slowly. I was still concerned, and I tried to walk to him again, but he snarled at me to stay back. He told me I'd better not walk back there, not if I wanted to stay out of trouble. I just kept walking closer, his words not registering in my head. I got closer and timidly reached out to touch his face, to calm him down, to tell him I was there and he was okay, but he grabbed my shirt with one strong, bloody hand and slammed me against the wall he leaned against. He got angry real quick, snapping at me. He told me if I wanted to keep my head out of a noose I'd ought to get out of this alley right now. I stared at him as he spattered blood on my face and soaked my shirt, horrified but entranced somehow. I saw that the glint in his eyes was no longer a trick of the light, they truly did glaze over in a haunting, pinkish sheen. He looked me coldly in the eyes and said I looked scared. I didn't know how to answer that. I was scared, but I was also concerned, and a little enamored in the strangest way possible. His eyes forced a response out of me, and I nodded my head slowly. "Then leave" he growled, but I snapped back at him. Was I really supposed to just leave him there? Bloody and cold in the rain? Qhat was I going to do, *not* help him? Whatever he did, I wanted to help him fix it. I needed to help him fix it.<br/>
He looked angry at that. He didn't want my help at all, he didn't want to drag me into his mess. he didn't want to put his trust in me to keep a secret, but I was already this far, and perhaps my help would be needed. He sighed, and let go of my shirt. Turning to follow the trail of blood, he half-heartedly threatened to kill me if I ratted him out, but I cut him off mid-sentence. I wouldn't dare. </p><p>I regretted offering my help when I followed him around the corner. the rain diluted and spread out the blood, making the scene look far more gruesome than it already was. It was the worst thing I had seen in my life. I held out my dying lantern to the disaster laying before me and I nearly collapsed.<br/>
there was a man laying on the cobble alley floor, smaller than us, dressed unrecognizably from what little I could see underneath the red. His head bent back in a sickening position, his mouth open like he was screaming, and bone protruded out from his throat. His face was torn off, shredded flesh hanging off his cheeks, his eyes bulged in horror. The rain fell in his gaping mouth, pouring out from the corners and the open holes in his cheeks in dark red streams. He was practically beheaded, the only thing keeping his head attached to the rest of his mangled body was his splintered spine that spiked out from his throat. I looked further down and his ribcage was torn open, ribs splintered and snapped off, piercing through any remaining in-tact skin. His stomach was caved in, pooling blood and rainwater. Anything inside his body was torn to shreds, viscera were thrown everywhere, hanging out of his gaping stomach and splattered across the brick walls. The ground was red, trickling through the cracks of rock and staining my shoes. This didn't look human, no person could have done this. Yet, when I turned to look at hope, the look in his eyes couldn't be considered human anyway.<br/>
The lantern light flickered as my hand began to shake. He huffed, finding my terror and regret humorous, and be walked towards the body. Alarms rang out in my head to run away, to scream, to throw up, but I looked at Hope, his eyes pleading for help, and the only thing I could bring myself to do was think of a solution. This was our mess now.</p><p>It was cold out, and the smell didn't travel far. It was unbearable in our corner of the alley, but from around the corner where I'd found Hope, it wasn't quite as strong. I thought quickly about our options; the night was still young, and the rain poured harder, drowning out my voice when I tried to speak. It already washed away most of the blood now, slipping between the stones and into the storm drain. It would take too long to dismember it and we couldn't start a fire, but if we moved quick enough we could throw it to the pigs.<br/>
I motioned for him to grab the victim's legs and we quickly hauled in out of the alley. I pulled off my jacket and wrapped it around him to avoid more blood spill, subjecting myself to the pounding rain. We scrambled in the dark to the pens, where the beasts could smell us coming, and came running when we got close. carefully we dumped it out of my jacket and into the pen, the giant things went to work immediately. In less than ten minutes the body was gone, nothing of him left. We trusted the blood to soak into the ground or wash away and trusted the pigs to still be hungry by morning. I reached over to him and we walked to the bathhouse. </p><p>I let him get himself clean and ran back to my bedroom. I crawled through the window to avoid tracking blood and mud through the corridor, and I hurled his bloody clothes into the lit fireplace. I sloughed off my own and threw them in, there would be no point trying to wash the blood out. I changed and grabbed something for him; he could borrow my clothes for the time being, not that he didn't before, anyway.<br/>
I looked at my bloody footprints scattered on the floor, the realization of what just happened finally setting in. He had just killed someone, and I, without question, helped dispose of the body. It felt strange, how inconsequential the incident felt. The only concern that weighed on my mind was if Hope was alright, and at that realization, I immediately exited the room. I would not analyze the situation too deeply just yet.<br/>
Hurrying as silently as possible back to Hope. I found him staring blankly into the air, that glimmer still shining in his eyes. I snapped him out of his trance with a touch to his shoulder, asked him if he was hurt, to which he shook his head. he was lying, I knew that, but I didn't press him about it. I handed him my clothes and we walked back to my room in silence. We entered, he turned sharply and shut the bathroom door behind him. I moved to clean up the shoeprints I left and tossed the rag into the fire. I didn't care anymore, it didn't really feel like it mattered. Less evidence, I suppose.</p><p>I sat on the edge of my bed with the knowledge of what I'd just done. He was eerily quiet behind the bathroom door, and the shadow cast through the crack in the floor showed no movement. His stillness made me feel nauseous, and the rapid flashing of that poor man's face in my mind helped me none. I absent-mindedly picked at the blood still stuck underneath my fingernails and considered future outcomes. Either wed get away with it or we'd be caught and hung. Our plan wasn't foolproof, certainly, but considering the lack of police back in our young days, you'd be surprised just how easy murder was to get away with. I reassured myself half-heartedly; surely the blood would be washed away by morning, surely the ravenous pigs would still be hungry when they were fed later on, surely the smell had not traveled far in the biting cold, and surely our clothes were burned and the body unfound.<br/>
But with my reassurances arose the vivid image of his face, smeared with blood, eyes gleaming and hungry. It should have scared me more, yet my face flushed at the thought. My back still stung from being slammed into a wall, and I could still smell his hot, bloody breath in my face. It should have scared me more, yet his animalistic appearance enamored me. I thought again about his hair, seeing the blood that soaked through the bright blonde, turning it pink. It should have scared me more, seeing him covered in the blood and viscera of another human being, yet it felt... almost normal to see him in such a way. It all should have scared me more. And yet I was more in love with him than I had ever been.<br/>
I felt afraid again when he walked out of the bathroom. Very slowly he opened the door and stepped out, my shirt a size too big and exposing his bruised collarbone, his pants rolled up to expose his scraped knees, hair still dripping onto his shoulders. He walked slowly towards me, the light from the fireplace across his face. He looked neutral, now, not so vicious as before, but that terrifying glimmer in his eyes remained. He stood between my knees and reached up to hold my face in his hands. I'll admit, I was terrified, expecting him to tear off my face as he'd just previously done, but he only cupped my face in his hands, rubbing his thumbs against my cheekbones. I was tempted to break the silence and ask if he was alright, but something in the back of my mind said to stay quiet, so I did. His face softened when he stared at me, that glimmer looked loving rather than angry, but still just as hungry. I stared at him, face flushed red and eyes wide, not sure what to do. Gently, he pulled my head against his stomach and held it there in a strange hug. He wrapped one arm over my shoulders and ran the other through my hair, and I saw no other choice but to accept the affection. I wrapped my arms around his legs and we sat like that for a while. He didn't move to hurt me, and I relaxed underneath his touch.</p><p>He didn't stop after that. A few weeks later, he killed another poor soul, one he needed my help with yet again. A few weeks after that, he did it again. People were getting suspicious, though they couldn't place a killer. After the third time, the higher-ups opted to house us in pairs to avoid us getting killed. Of course, we were paired together, as in their eyes I was the only one able to keep him under control. It felt ironic, to keep together the most likely suspect of our small group of workers, and the only person he's been close to in his life. They should have seen it coming, the idiots they were.<br/>
Despite their efforts to get everybody in bed by early nightfall and lock the doors, he kept slipping out to feed his hunger and I would follow suit to cover it up. the poor fools should have barred the windows or kept us off the ground floor of the building. but they didn't, and we would slip out of the window and do our thing, and we'd slip back in and they would be none the wiser. It was almost funny how easily we slipped past their radar. very funny indeed.</p><p>He tried explaining it once. I sat him down one night after one of his weird little feasts, after I had helped him hide his atrocity and cleaned him up without question, simply to ask... Why? Why does he do it? It's not like I would stop helping him with or without an answer, I was just curious.<br/>
He was quiet. his eyes shifted like he was thinking, and his hands absentmindedly squeezed mine. He thought hard for a few moments, and when he spoke his voice hardly sounded his own.<br/>
He said it was like a hunger. well, I was sure of that considering his questionable murder methods, but he said no. No, not like that hunger. It wasn't a hunger to eat their flesh, though that did happen, but much deeper than that. A hunger in his chest, he said. It was like he felt when they feared him, and it felt wonderful. He fed on their terror and agony like it was a life source. I didn't understand it but I nodded my head. I wasn't going to stop helping him and we both knew that. I suppose it was as good an answer as any, for the time being.</p><p>Surely, though, I had to come to my sinister senses at some point too, right? Of course, I did. There was a time once when Hope was knocked out cold by some blundering bloke who was tired of his nonsense. I was there after he was pulled away and I carried hope to the infirmary, one of the few times I had ever been truly scared for his life. After several worrying hours, he was doing alright, and I ran out to collect wood for the fireplace when I saw that bastard. He was lurking next to the woodpile, staring up at the full moon, bruised to hell and back. Quite honestly, I can't quite recall what really happened next. I think I spoke to him, I had to have spoken to him. He was my height, only an inch off, but he shrunk back when I stood straight and stared him in the eye. Something felt good about it, about the intimidation. Slowly my vision went red, my brain went to static, and the next thing I knew I was kneeling over a man beaten within an inch of his life. He was too bloody to recognize and shards of bone stuck out from his nose, teeth were knocked out and his eyes were swollen shut. I barely caught my breath as I got up and dragged him to the horse barn a few yards away. they shuffled a bit as I hurled him into an empty paddock; I didn't care about finishing him off. He could suffer.<br/>
I stumbled back to our room, trying to avoid attention, but everybody had gone to sleep, and I could slip in through the door quietly. My heart and my head were pounding, screaming, and I turned to the bathroom door to fix myself. However, the moment I laid eyes on Hope I felt blissfully numb. He slept opposite the door, the fireplace crackled in between us, lighting his busted face in an orange glow. I'd have thought it beautiful if I didn't snap myself out of my trance and moved to wash my hands.<br/>
I let them soak in warm water and I stared at my reflection. My nose was bleeding and a black eye started to show itself. My eyes looked... strange. For a split second, I almost didn't recognize myself, a faint glimmer discoloring them and changing my whole face somehow. I blinked and it was gone, I was still me, but the feeling didn't leave. I washed my face and picked the remaining blood from underneath my fingernails, and I left.<br/>
I stopped before I crossed the room to my bed, glancing over at Hope once more. Before I could stop myself, I quietly padded over to him and kneeled next to him. he looked like hell, obviously, but looking at him brought me a strange sense of ease. Subconsciously I reached out to run my finger against his cheek, careful not to press too hard and wake him. I traced the lines on his face, gently eased the furrow in his brow, and rested my hand against his chest. The way he soothed me was unexplainable, but I sat there staring at him until the weight in my chest lifted and my mind wasn't screeching static.<br/>
I supposed I was being creepy enough and I got up. Impulsively, I bent down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. I did not do that consciously. It hardly even felt like a forced movement, it was instinctual as if I'd done it a thousand times before. I startled a little, thinking he would wake up, but he still slept soundly. I dragged myself into my own bed and willed myself not to think about it. </p><p>The next few days were spent in nauseating fear. Nobody found the mess I made till the afternoon, and nobody was certain of how he was still alive. His face was busted to the point of no recovery, and he was incapacitated for a long while. Nobody except Hope seemed to notice the wrappings around my knuckles, which I was grateful for. Someone came into our room to inform us he'd been found bleeding out in a horse paddock, and I acted dumb and hid my hands. Hope said nothing.<br/>
Of course, they suspected me to have maimed him, and once he was in a condition to speak properly I was sure id be in big trouble, but a few days later we were pleasantly surprised to find he didn't know who his attacker was at all. It made no sense quite frankly, the moon was full, the sky was clear, and there was no reason he shouldn't have seen his assailant. Yet, he could not place the face for the life of him. The lad could hardly remember his own name hed been beaten so brutally, or so I thought that was to blame.<br/>
I would come to terms with what we were becoming a week afterward. Hope was alright, still unable to get back to work just yet, but his personality seemed to come back to him. The other fellow was in worse shape, but alive. We were standing in the same room, the three of us among a crowd, assembled for a meeting regarding our local serial killer. I stared him down the entire time, and I watched him writhe in discomfort. I felt his fear. I felt his unease and felt his terror when our eyes met. He didn't even remember I was the one that hurt him, he had supposedly no reason to fear me, and that fact made him feel even worse.<br/>
It felt exhilarating. I loved every moment, every movement he made to squeeze himself out of my sight, every shifty glance in my direction to meet my unyielding stare. I loved it. I felt Hope shift next to me and I broke my gaze to look at him. He looked up at me in anticipation, waiting for me to say something. He knew what I was feeling at that moment, and I tried to tell him I understood. I understood what he felt now. I understood his desire and hunger for fear, and how invigorating it felt seeping out of that poor bastard across the room.<br/>
Something clicked between us in that moment. There was a level of trust, a level of understanding built just then, our first real step towards what we would become. He looked so very relieved to know that I understood it now. He saw the glimmering hunger in my eyes and he smiled. There was overwhelming love in his eyes, and I'm sure there was in mine as well. We were in this together, now, there was no doubt about that.</p><p>I'm sure you can guess how the rest of this story goes. We didn't stop, exploring our hunger for fear until we were barely human, and here we are. We are still a unit, still one solid, murderous thing. He still does the dirty work, and I still cover it up. It's funny how we've always worked that way, synchronized in an unspoken understanding. We've been in this mess together all our lives, and I still love him endlessly, no matter how many faces he steals or how many unfortunate fools fall victim to his hunger. Hope is a monster, and so am I, and we're in this together. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>one of these days ill learn how to write horror better. happy Halloween and thank you erin @skelelephant for letting me dump the concept of this fic onto her and helping me figure out like half the plot points lmao<br/>some of the events and context for said events can be found in my other fic, I Had Never Known Love, if u feel so inclined to read that one too</p></blockquote></div></div>
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